Have you ever felt like an outsider, like you are missing something everyone else has?

Maybe you are like Dawn and smoking makes that ache a little smaller for you. Even after quitting, Dawn struggled with the void she felt within herself until she started to ask the right questions and find her own unique answers.

Enjoy Dawn’s story here on the You Can Quit Smoking podcast.

Jessi:

Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm here today with Dawn.

Dawn, thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?


Dawn:

Yes. Hello. Thank you for having me. My name is Dawn. I'm a heartful coach, transformation guide, shadow worker. And for the last 20 years, I've been helping people through their own transformation journeys.

I started off working in corporate. Recently, in the last seven or eight years, I've been working for myself and working with people directly, one to one.

I'm a mom. I love being outside in nature. And I have a delightful partner that I'm with now. And I love life. I'm very happy to be here having this conversation with you.


Jessi:

Well, we sound really like-minded. I could have said all that myself.

So, I really appreciate you being here and I'm interested to hear your story. What's your story with smoking?


Dawn:

My dad's French and we lived in France when I was very little. We moved around a lot. So, when we lived in France, I was always trying to fit in. But I also wanted to be cool and I've never been cool. I'm 47 now. Back in the day when I was young, smoking was a cool thing to do.

And also I started very young feeling like I had this existential void inside of myself. And I noticed that I could use food and smoking and drugs and things like that to kind of appease that intense yearning that I had inside of myself.

And smoking was one of the easiest drugs to get involved with from the age of 13. And there it started. It became a companion of sorts for a very very long time.


Jessi:

So I'm curious, was it a social thing for you or was it something that you did on your own? Were you looking up to adults? What was the cool factor from? What made it appealing?


Dawn:

In France, every single person smoked pretty much when I was a kid. My dad smoked all the way through me growing up at school. If you were part of the cool kids, they all smoked.

We used to sneak off behind the school grounds to go and do it. And there was a status attached to it. There was definitely a stigma of being a square or being uncool or whatever if you didn't do it. And I was so desperate to fit in in any possible way that I did what I could. It was really that simple. I just wanted to fit in.

And then I noticed it also had this byproduct of making this ache inside of myself feel a little bit less achy. I definitely didn't have that awareness, conscious awareness, until in my early 20s.


Jessi:

So, how did it evolve from there? Like you said, that awareness didn't really come until later, but how did you feel about yourself? How did you feel in your body and your feelings when you were smoking? Did you feel more in power? Were you getting sick from it? What was that going into the later years?


Dawn:

Yeah. So, in the early days, it was interesting because I don't think anybody naturally likes smoking. I haven't come across anybody that in the early days just went, "Oh, yeah, from the get-go that tasted amazing and I loved it."

No, I have never come across anyone like that. It's normally and certainly from my experience, it was like, “This is disgusting.” But you just kind of have to tough it out and pretend it's not happening and power through it.

And when I was 15 we left France and came back to England. And I was having to fit in yet again. It was still at a time when smoking was such a cool thing to do especially at 16, 17, 18. If you were one of the people who smoked, it was a thing, a highly regarded thing.

I don't know. I think I've always had a bit of an ability to take things to the excess and it was never enough. I started off at a little bit and then I was like, "Okay, now I want more. Now I need more."

It's been the same for food and relationships, codependency, right through to smoking. It's got a central vibe to all of those things. It just never felt satiated. So, it just evolved. I wanted more.

And then when I went to Uni, it just got more and more. And I would wake up, it would be the first thing I'd do. And then there was a part of me that really enjoyed people going, "Oh my god, you smoke so much." I'm like, "Yeah, I need it."


Jessi:

Yeah, the badge.


Dawn:

Yeah, the badge. And you know, we were still smoking in pubs at that time indoors. It wasn't a thing. You just didn't think about it. So much of this was unconscious.

And it wasn't until I got to the age of 24 and my boyfriend at the time said to me, "If you don't stop smoking, we can't carry on together." For whatever reason, he was my catalyst. And I read a book and at the end of that book, I decided I needed to stop smoking and I did.

That sounds very, very easy. It was not easy. It was like a proper addict's reaction to the idea of not smoking, not having my crutch anymore, not having that sense of security anymore, not having something to rely on to make me feel better. And I was also scared of putting on weight. I was scared of being ostracized.

Also, I liked the little clique of people who went outside to smoke during the day when you're working. You know, you kind of form friendships and if you're not smoking, then you're not part of that friendship group anymore. Addicts do love to congregate together and I certainly enjoyed that part of feeling like I belonged somewhere.

So, yeah, he was my catalyst and I did give up. But having read this particular book by Allen Carr, you probably heard of it.


Jessi:

Yeah.


Dawn:

Yeah. And that was that really.


Jessi:

Was the reaction for you more emotional or physical? Were there sides of both for you when you gave up?


Dawn:

Well, by the time I'd finished reading it… you can smoke all the way through reading the big Allen Carr book. And so by the time I got to the end of it, I knew logically that my body would get rid of the nicotine withdrawal.

So I remember the withdrawal symptoms and feeling uncomfortable, feeling on edge, feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. But I just trusted that it would get less and it did. And then it was more the emotional side that became the problem.

Like the physical was desperately uncomfortable, but it subsided just like the book said it would. So then it was more the emotional side of what was going to help me through the most difficult moments of my life. Because I didn't feel like I had anyone really or anything else and that was my constant companion/ When it's no longer there, what's left you know?


Jessi:

Yeah I can relate to that. We depend on it so heavily to survive, to get by, to feel all right in the world. So what did you find to replace that to comfort yourself to feel like you belonged, have that loneliness, have that companionship?


Dawn:

Because it was such an unconscious thing, that question didn't really ever raise itself in a healthy way until I had dark night of the soul at the age of 35. And that's when I suddenly went, “Hang on a second, my whole life has collapsed. Now I need to ask myself, where do I want to belong? Who am I? What do I want for myself? How am I going to rebuild myself after this?

So, I didn't ask myself. I just did the best that I could. And that kind of looked like codependency with very intense toxic relationships. Feeding that kind of need for the void in high octane interactions.

Or it would be food or chocolate. Chocolate's always been a thing or sugar. Definitely those things.

It's been a while since I've thought about this. So, it's really interesting to see the story arc of what that journey's been like, you know.


Jessi:

Yeah. You can't see it when you're in it. It's always looking back.


Dawn:

Exactly. Always.


Jessi:

So, you talked about sugar. That's a big one. Did you end up gaining weight like you were worried about?


Dawn:

Oh, yeah. I definitely went to any sort of place where I could get that void filled. That was a very happy, comfortable place for me.

I've always been a very sensitive person with lots of emotions, big feelings. I didn't know what to do with them. Definitely feeling like an outsider, on edge, overwhelmed, confused, lost, like black sheep of the family. I think that's very common to a lot of addicts as well, isn't it?


Jessi:

Yes.


Dawn:

So, it wasn't until I kind of just started to realize that those were the things that were fueling me, that anything changed.

But up until that point, yeah, I put on weight and lost weight because even that's an addiction, isn't it? Kind of hating yourself, loving yourself.

Conditional loving is a whole part of the storyline for me. At least it has been. I think I've spent a lot of my life hating who I was and trying to fit in and using as many sorts of substances as possible.


Jessi:

Yeah, that was the way for me too. So, I was able to work with that in the process of quitting smoking.

But it sounds like you maybe just kind of moved on to other things. Do you feel like at least quitting smoking kind of opened a door way to start to do that work?


Dawn:

Smoking showed me that I had an ability to be addicted to certain things. It was more the canary in the coal mine. It was showing me there was something much bigger going on. And I just like you do, you go from that kind of drug to a harder drug.

So I did drugs and I was addicted to sex for a while and the relationships. And then it just kind of got more and more and more intense. And within that, I just wasn't asking myself any questions.

So, you know, it really is surprising that the smoking thing wasn't a catalyst for more because the next thing which was this toxic relationship with this man. Because that was even more extreme than the smoking. It kind of was able to cancel itself out and transfer onto him and other things. But it was this exact same mechanism. It just transferred.


Jessi:

Yeah. I mean, the timing has to be right, you know? It's not any specific thing really. That's why people always compare addictions and I'm like, “It doesn't really matter how addictive it is. It's the way you feel about yourself and what you come to understand about yourself.”

So I think that's a common trajectory. It's not like anything was missed. You got there when you needed to get there.

But I'm wondering if you had at least some confidence from quitting smoking that you can quit something? You can be heavily addicted and quit something. Did that have space a little bit in the back of your brain as you're going through these moments of excess and on that trajectory? It's just like, “Hey, if you want to, you can get off. You could.” Did you at least kind of know that?


Dawn:

I think what it gave me was a little bit of confidence. And I think up until that point, I'd been so sure that I was so rubbish at everything doing that. Even though it was externally motivated by this person's basically demanding that I did it, I still did it. And I was still successful at doing it.

So, yeah, I think you're right. It definitely was a stepping stone on what you could class as the recovery of my own self-esteem and self-worth. For sure. It was just a long journey.


Jessi:

Yeah. You know, like I said, we get there in our own time. And maybe this is more of a long-term thing, but did you notice any benefits to quitting? Could just be breathing. What did you notice in the change after quitting?


Dawn:

The first one was a sense of taste. I could suddenly start tasting things a lot more. It was much more of a dynamic experience and fullbodied.

When I was at school living in France, my best mate's mom used to smoke while she was chewing her food. And I always used to think, "Oh, that is fascinating." But I think even as soon as you’ve finished eating and then you light up, it's still similar.

Like it's still a process of masking your whole food experience with an aftertaste. It's almost like you're just eating to get to the point of finishing so you can have a cigarette, you know, that kind of thing. So the whole food flavor experience definitely shifted.

Obviously, I stopped smelling. That was a big deal. And then I would say I've always been somebody who has like hay fever or allergies or things like that. And my ability to breathe got easier for sure. I didn't get as out of breath as I used to.

And I was financially better off big time. Good lord. Imagine being a smoker today is so expensive. I don't know what it's like in America, but in England it's phenomenal. It's so expensive. I just don't know how people afford to do that.


Jessi:

Yeah, it's differently priced everywhere in the States, whether you're in the city or the country, what state you're in. But someone was telling me yesterday that they were paying 12 bucks a pack. So, that's definitely steeper than what I was paying


Dawn:

For 12?


Jessi:

For 20.


Dawn:
For 20? Yeah, it's closer to 20 pounds here, which is maybe 25 bucks.


Jessi:

Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Definitely more expensive over there then.


Dawn:
It’s a lot.


Jessi:

Yeah. Somebody that's in it right now and they're wanting to quit. Maybe they have some external pressure on them like you, where someone's like, "Hey, you need to quit. You need to quit."

And they kind of want to, but they don't know what to do or where to start. Maybe they read Allen Carr and it didn't work for them. Maybe they've tried to quit before and come back to it. What words of advice would you have for them?


Dawn:

I really recommend reading a book. I had it here just a minute ago. Anyway, maybe you could put it in your show notes. But it's a really, really, really excellent book about addiction and recovery. And what it says is you need to understand two fundamental things when you're going through addiction recovery.

The first is what caused you to be a match to this experience in the first place. So the underlying assumption is that we are all addicts as a byproduct of our emotional pain rather than because there's something wrong with us or it just happened.

So if you're working from that premise, understanding what is causing you to feel less than or not happy with yourself or what's going on underneath the need to have an external source make you feel more whole. I would definitely start with that.

And you don't even have to give up smoking whilst you're doing that. Just be self-reflective. Ask the questions. Do some inner child work. Talk to a coach. Find somebody who can guide you into those deeper spaces. Do some shadow work to figure out what's really going on here.


Jessi at midroll:

We will get back to the conversation in just a moment.

If you are finding value in these episodes but you feel like you need a physical roadmap to hold onto, I wrote something just for you. My book, Honor Your Heart, is designed to be a companion for your unique journey.

It isn't just a list of reasons to stop. Instead, it is a deep dive into the heart-led framework we talk about here on the show. It covers how to navigate the identity shifts, how to handle the hard days with grace, and how to finally trust yourself again.

Whether you are just starting to think about moving on or are just wanting to keep on track, this book offers the perspective and tools you need to make your success sustainable.

You can find Honor Your Heart by visiting honoryourheart.net/book It is currently fifteen percent off for my listeners when you use the discount code PODCAST at checkout.

Now, let's head back to today's story.


Dawn:

And then the other part is if you're craving stuff that really makes you feel less than, imagine you've got an emotional bucket and your bucket is empty. And so you smoke to try and artificially fill the bucket.

But what actually needs to happen is you need emotional, mental, spiritual, physical things to fill your bucket either through relationships or needs or understanding what you want or creativity or inspiration or whatever. So you start filling your own bucket through things that you've identified that bring you joy and happiness and ease and peace.

And when you first start, you might not know. You might have absolutely no idea. And I didn't. I've got a happiness jar here on my window sill. And because I didn't know what I liked, I would every time something good happened or something that I enjoyed, I'd write it down on a piece of paper and put it in. And then eventually I had a whole jar full and I opened them all up and went, “Okay this is the theme across if you chart it. These are the things that I'm enjoying that I like that I want more of.”

So I started to get to know myself and therefore started to fill my own jar and now I don't have that gaping deep void inside of myself. It's not there at all ever. That to me is the end point for this.

The canary in the coal mine was the smoking. It was saying, “Hey you're not all right. There's something deeper here going on.” Which led me on this path to this point which now feels wholly fulfilling.

And like if you're honoring your heart, you know that there's certain things that fill you up beyond logic or reason. And it might just be picking up pebbles that look like a certain color on the beach and then making a little jar with them. Or painting in a certain way or like there's so many little things as well as the big things. They don't have to be all of the things.

So, I'd say start with understanding what's going on and then start to fill, I call it your love bucket. Start to fill your love bucket and those two things will help you understand what your next steps will be.

And eventually, if you want to do it this way, you can say to yourself, "Right, I've had enough now. I don't need to do this. I feel like I'm in a stronger, more resilient place. I'm ready just to let it go and work through the physical feelings." But you still added in so much goodness into your life that it doesn't feel like you're taking something out of it by stopping smoking. Does that make sense?


Jessi:

Absolutely. I think that's really beautifully said and great advice. It’s really starting from the inside, working outward.


Dawn:

One hundred percent, that's always my go-to anyway these days. Long-term change is what I'm all about and what I really advocate. I don't want quick fixes to something that isn't sustainable that is going to come along and bite you in the bum later on. I want it to be okay. Let's get on with it. Let's sort it out so that we don't have to worry about it again in the future.


Jessi:

Yeah. That's why so many of us fall again. I didn't ask you, but I'm curious. Did you quit on that first try? Had you tried to quit before then?


Dawn:

Oh, I tried so many times before. Yeah. So many times.

Funnily enough, we were talking about this, my partner and I literally just before this call. How do you create the most perfect storm to create a catalytic moment for change? And it's just so random. I just don't think that you can go, "Oh, this person is going to change in this way at that time on this day in this way." I just don't think it works like that.

But I tried so many times before I met this person. It wasn't a healthy relationship. But he did give me an ultimatum. Normally I'm such a rebellious person. For some reason, that codependent toxic relationship we had allowed me to move into a space which was healthier. God knows why. I really don't know, but it did. And that's what happened.


Jessi:

Yeah. And it just goes to show something good could come from something that is not that great, but you can still gain things and learn things from that. And do you think that it was all the times that you had practiced before set you up to be successful that last time?


Dawn:

I think what happens in my experience of myself and with people that I've worked with is that there's a, “I've had enough of my own shit moment.” Where you're just like, "Oh my god, this is ridiculous. I can't do this anymore." And it's at that point after failed attempts, you're like, "This is ridiculous."

And that's pushed me also over into that ability to be able to do it. So, they weren't without their merit. Those failed attempts weren't bad things. They weren't failures. They were all just a culmination to a point of expansion. But if you told me that at the time, I'd been like, "Oh, no. That's not how that works." But it is, right?


Jessi:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here and I'm really excited about your work with the heart. Can you talk to us more about what you do with your clients and where people can find you?


Dawn:

Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you. The way that I view my work is very similar to what we've described so far today.

Many of us are armored up emotionally trying to protect ourselves from further pain or people or places or things. And I call that your emotional armor. That could also be your trauma responses or pain that's happened in your life all those kinds of things. And instead of working through your emotional world and mindset and emotions, we tend to just build up these walls around us that eventually start to suffocate.

My aim is to always create the most healthy, connected, intimate relationships with our partners. But also ultimately with ourselves, to the point where you can live the truest version of you, whatever that means, like without spiritual language. I just want you to be the most happiest expanded version of you in a way that makes you happy and brings you joy or ease or peace or whatever it looks like.

So I work with people in specific three to six month containers to allow for deep transformation, exploration, curiosity, shadow work, inner child work with a very practical and measured way of approaching a very emotional experience for the purposes of our chemical healing and change. Have you ever read that book Untamed by Glennon Doyle?


Jessi:

I haven't.


Dawn:

I really recommend it because it speaks to this caged phenomenon where, especially women, we feel like we keep ourselves small and caged and quiet and meek in many ways. So we don't ruffle feathers or make a mess or cause problems.

And I want to speak to that part of ourselves that we hide away and keep small and stop growth for because we're scared of what's going to happen or the repercussions or whatever. And so that to me is the heart. Being able to expand to honor your truth, your intuition, your inner guidance, relearn those skills, relearn those experiences or learn for the first time. So that's why I've created the Heartful Academy.

And a lot of my stuff is on my podcast, too. And we talk about concepts that are fundamentally important for change and growth. But also, just having normal conversations with people who are also going through these things so we can understand what it looks and sounds like in real life.


And a lot of the time we try to be as humorous as we possibly can because these topics are heavy or can feel very heavy and so bringing some laughter and just a sense of joy to these conversations is really powerful too. So yeah, that's what I do.


Jessi:

What's the name of your podcast?


Dawn:

It's The New Dawn podcast.


Jessi:

Really, you touched on something there too with the heaviness and the light side where it's like I found that I couldn't experience true joy until I went to the pain. So, it's like these things are heavy, they're hard, but the reward is that you get to really feel fully, which means you get to really experience joy again and love and compassion and all those wonderful things.

And I love that you talk about that side, that conditioning for women to be small, to be meek. I've been working with the wild woman archetype recently and trying to understand it. Yeah.


Dawn:

The concept that I use is called "the wild one." So that speaks very similarly to that. I love that expansion. True expansion.

Taking up space, using your voice, really allowing yourself to meet those outside edges of your upper limit and still breathe into those spaces. And then look after yourself when you need to and then expand a bit more. Look after yourself. You know that constant wave of in breath, out breath that happens. But yeah, I love that for you. Are you working with somebody or…?


Jessi:

I have a coach. But I'm working with this one on my own and trying to understand. Sometimes I feel like I get it. Other times I feel like I don't. But just trying to be patient and explore deeper.

I feel like we can always go deeper too. You know, even if we've come a long way and work, there's always more. I found that to be exhausting in the beginning, but now it's kind of fun. It's like, "Ooh, new adventure. That's interesting.” I don't know if you had that experience yourself doing this work where it's like that.


Dawn:

Yeah for sure and I think a lot of sort of spiritual ego was attached in my early days to a lot of this stuff like "Oh look at me. I'm doing this and doing this and doing this." And then you reach a certain point and I think you just go, "I'm just human like let's just strip all of that extra stuff back and just come back to myself what is it I want what do.”

And then create a life from that space. Then it's just like learning. If you're really into your own life, you're still constantly learning. Learning about yourself, learning about topics, learning about other things. Then it just becomes a sort of maybe you found this too, but a sort of school of life, right?
Not that I'm trying to get to a healed finite place, but a place just to be in today and enjoy what comes here today, right now, in this moment. And be with it and allow it and explore it and stay curious with it and that's it. What else is there, right?


Jessi:

We make things complicated. And yeah, I just think that's interesting too. Because that feeling of peace or knowing or whatever we're kind of chasing, it changes. And if we can let those identities change too. The smoker identity, the spiritual identity, you know, there's so many things that we can just work with, play with and let come and go. And yeah, it's really fun work to me now or I try to enjoy it.


Dawn:

The smoking identity thing is a really really good one to speak to, I think, as well. I'm sure you've talked about this before. But for me, I try to really question any wounded identity that I hold on to.

I was addicted to my own suffering for years and years and years, and smoking was part of that. So, I also had an identity that I was attached to, of the victim, of the martyr, of the sufferer, of the sensitive who had two big emotions. Like I was very happily uncomfortable in those spaces.

And it's not until you get to a point where you're like, "Do I really want to live like this for the rest of my life?" These are really important moments to learn and evolve and understand so we can turn it into our own personal form of wisdom. Like this is our hero's journey.

So then it becomes, “Okay, well, if that's not my identity, do I ever need to refer to myself as a recovering smoker? No. Do I ever need to refer to myself as anything but dawn today, right now? No, like I don't have to be a recovering anything unless I choose to be. But I don't have to feel attached to that. And if I am, that's a question like why? Why do I still need to?” But identity, you're right, is such an important part of this.


Jessi:

For sure. And there's so much freedom in that uncaged place, when you can leave those identities behind and understand that the ones you have or carry don't have to be permanent. So that's very nice for me.


Dawn:

Yeah. Same. Same. Definitely.


Jessi:

Well, it's been a joy talking to you. You've shared a lot from your heart today and I really appreciate your vulnerability, your honesty.

You know, talking about things like self-hatred is not easy, but a lot of us have been through that or are in it. So, I really appreciate you talking about that, coming out, being honest with us. Thank you.


Dawn:

My absolute pleasure, Jesse. Thank you for having me today. I love talking about these topics and thank you for highlighting this really important part of a human experience and what it means and touching people from this place. So yeah, it's really cool. Thank you.


Jessi:

I love it. I love connecting and so glad you could come today. So thank you again.


Dawn:

You too.


Jessi:

Take care everyone. See you next week.


Dawn:

Take care.


End of Interview

As Dawn explained, we need to develop new skills to enjoy our lives free from destructive behavior.

Through much struggle, Connie came to understand just how important it was for her to break generational cycles and end the loop of addictive behavior in her own life.

Hear how she finally found happiness in Episode 37 of You Can Quit Smoking.